It's an airline in transition. And no one feels it more than Jet Airways' cabin attendant Sushmita D. Depending on her roster, it is, "What meal would you like to have sir?" on some days. And "What meal would you like to buy Sir?" on others. These days, it can be a bit confusing with both lines being delivered on different flights the same day. Sushmita has been with the airline for about four years and is getting used to either selling a vegetarian meal for Rs 200 on JetKonnect flights, or dishing it out gratis with a smile, on Jet Airways. Her dilemma, in some ways, reflects that of India’s largest airline, as it tries to straddle the full-service and low-fare models—trying out, these days, a hybrid model along the way.
Last month, Jet Airways extinguished JetLite, one of its two low-fare brands that had been created to operate Air Sahara, bought about seven years ago from Subroto Roy. The other, JetKonnect, launched in 2009, is now the low-fare brand with more than twice the number of seats on offer than Jet Airways on the domestic routes. Cabin crew and uniforms are common on both brands, though the aircraft liveries are different. JetKonnect competes head-on with IndiGo and SpiceJet, the two largest low-cost carriers (LCC) in the country—but it is not a pure LCC like them. All the JetKonnect planes (sourced from the erstwhile JetLite and Jet Airways) will have a small business class cabin, called JetKonnect Premiere.
Jet is reconfiguring the JetLite planes, to carve out a business class that the planes did not have earlier. So, even while catering to the price sensitive Indian customer, Jet is also trying to scoop up its original constituency of business class passengers in the front of the plane. Operationally too, the low-fare airline does not work like a typical LCC. So will this strategy of straddling two separate worlds work?
That's not all. In another six months or so, if it continues to grow at the same pace, IndiGo could overtake Jet as the country’s biggest domestic airline in terms of market share. So, will Jet's new avatar be able to slow down IndiGo's runaway growth?
That's far from clear at this stage.
Having a separate business class certainly increases the complexity in any airline operation. Business class passengers—no matter how few they may be—are served up all the frills: Meals on linen, hot and cold beverages, plus on-ground facilities like special check-in and lounges. "The truth is that we are seeing a number of passengers who are willing to pay more [around 1.5 to 2 times the economy fare] to travel business class. This obviously helps shore up the margins on every Konnect flight. Already, the yields are much better than on JetLite, the pure economy carrier," says Nikos Kardassis, CEO, Jet Airways.
.jpg)
